


The Second Act

by flamewarflipsides



Category: The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers, True Detective
Genre: Books, Child Abuse, F/M, Fridge Logic, Library, Meta, Molestation, Pastiche, Research, Speculation, covert incest, king in yellow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 20:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1239709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamewarflipsides/pseuds/flamewarflipsides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Hart and Cohle are dealing with a serial killer whose principle victim writes journals about black stars, Carcosa, and the Yellow King. Cohle is bound to identify these as coming from the book by Chambers, but for some reason he's not being seen reading the book. Well, Marty's not stupid, and in 2002, he can use a search engine and his local library. Can he learn something from The King in Yellow?</p><p>For the "No Dialog" prompt at LiteraryFanfictoin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Act

The sunlight came in through the window, piercing the air, illuminating a cloud of dust motes in yellow light. It stayed that way, still and quiet, until a librarian parted it.

Marty watched her closely, unable and unwilling to look away. His eye couldn’t resist the young woman’s pale yellow sundress. It wasn’t all that tight, at least not on purpose, but it didn’t need to be. That particular cut of skirt, which his daughter had once explained to him was an A-line, gently draped over the curves of her body, its bright color creating a pair of twin suns that disappeared beneath the horizon of the shelf as she bent to put away the books.

Then the spell was broken, and Marty Hart made his way into fiction. The books smelled musty, thick like smoke, and a wry joke about the dangers of books welled up in the savage parts of his mind. He filed it away for next time he needed a comeback and continued into the sea of muted reds and greens, stippled-texture fabrics over stiff hardcovers and flaccid paperbacks that bent halfway onto the next book on the shelf. To someone with a mind like Rust’s, a place like this might be an adventure, a place to disappear into a fantasy land far away from Louisiana. To one with that kind of vision, this place could suck up a life, the way it had Dora Lange’s.

P gave way to PS, and the numbers slowly built up, his eye darting to the little white tag on each spine quicker and quicker each time as his hands began to tremble in anticipation. He was suddenly struck with the familiar titillating fear that he might be caught here, eating the forbidden fruit, by someone who knew what he was really doing. What would he say? How would he explain it? How he always did, maybe.

Finally the numbers soared into the thousands, and suddenly he read every title as they ran past him, heart hammering in his chest. Finally he found it, and there it was, some strange edition, spiraling Yellow Sign embossed in gold leaf into a mustard yellow hardcover. Finally he picked it off the shelf and held it, the book that all these crazy bastards must be reading, that Rust said was about a play that would drive anyone involved nuts.

He went to open it, to flip to a page, when a sharp burn raced across his fingertip. He hurried and put it in his mouth, before the blood could make its way onto the paper that had freed it. And then he thought of Audrey, of his once-sweet little girl, back home, waiting. What had Rust said about this book? And what had Marty seen of the people who had read it?

Marty took the book in both hands and pulled, ripping the cover from the spine. He repeated the process with the other cover and went to work on the pages.


End file.
